Bail funds, organizations that collect money to post bail for community members who are eligible for cash bail to stay out of jail until the time of their trial, have grown throughout US history, buoyed by major civil rights events such as the Red Scares, Civil Rights movements, Vietnam War Protests, among others. Given the volume of potential community members who would benefit from bail fund assistance and the plethora of defendant information required to process the bail payments, such funds like the Springfield Bail Fund face a logistical and management challenge.
In 2016, just four years after launching their business, the four founders of Campus Sutra (a youth-oriented online fashion brand) had to decide whether to join an online marketplace’s brand accelerator program. Joining the program promised rapid growth, but the exclusivity clause was risky. How should the founders evaluate the lucrative proposal? Nurturing high-quality private labels through support programs that accelerated the growth of exclusive brands seemed to help the platforms enhance customer engagement, but was the promise of support from the online marketplace worth the restrictions of platform exclusivity?
Founded in 1984, United Safety & Survivability Corporation (USSC) was an American company headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, that began in a garage with just a few products and a dream to develop better and safer transportation solutions. Like most firms, as COVID-19 started to spread in the United States and around the globe, USSC found itself in uncharted waters. The transportation sector, in which USSC operated, was among the most affected by the pandemic as people stopped using public transportation or were confined to their homes. The uncertainty regarding the transportation industry’s future was as substantial as the drop in demand caused by the pandemic. USSC’s chief executive officer found himself in a difficult situation, as the company would soon run out of money. At the same time, there were no clear answers yet to fundamental questions about the industry’s future. USSC's leadership team had to quickly decide on both short-term (tactical) responses to COVID-19 and long-term (strategic) decisions, including decisions about its product portfolio and research and development strategy.
Facing strong pressure from investors to improve financial performance and preserve capital, senior management at Euroland Foods must select which projects to fund across a slate of major investment proposals for 2021. While the board of directors has imposed a limit of EUR120 million for the company budget, various managers have proposed projects totaling EUR316 million. The task for students is to evaluate each proposal's financial attributes and qualitative factors (mainly strategic considerations and internal company politics), then choose the projects to be approved. This case presents two alternative modes of delivery: (1) a standard case discussion; or (2) a role-play exercise with a debriefing. The teaching note includes role-playing character descriptions for distribution to students and describes both modes of delivery. The different viewpoints of the company managers featured in these character descriptions is a unique aspect of this case, which affords students the opportunity to grapple with some aspects of capital budgeting that they don't normally encounter. The multifunctional aspect of this case affords an opportunity for a finance instructor to coteach it with an organizational behavior instructor. Points of linkage are in the areas of group leadership and the assessment and management of group decision-making processes. The case is suitable for intermediate corporate finance courses.
New opportunities, challenges, and decisions arose for a pub owner and his business partners when celebrity Halle Berry raved on social media about the hot wings served at the pub. Berry's post sparked an unprecedented 28-day sellout and a firestorm of news coverage that kept the business going at a time when the restaurant industry was suffering from government-imposed restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pub owner and his partners wonder whether to seize momentum and enter the fiercely competitive packaged goods industry, bottling and selling their signature wing sauces.
In late 2020, the board of the Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF) was preparing for its strategic planning session. The question on the agenda was, Should the ECF target millennials or baby boomers for its endowment development tools and strategies? Board members were of two minds when it came to millennials. Some members believed the ECF should intensify its efforts among baby boomers, as time was running out on this donor demographic. Others believed the ECF's relationships with baby boomers were strong and that it was now time for the ECF to begin actively courting a new generation of donors. Nneka Otogbolu, the newly appointed director of communications and equity strategy for the ECF, was working on her presentation for the board. Her team had carefully researched the two options, leaving it to her to decide what the recommendation should be. She would need to make her mind up soon, as the board meeting was in two days.
ORTA Anadolu, a denim manufacturer based in Turkey that produces jeans for major global brands, is seeking to embrace the movement for a circular economy by redesigning its products and processes. How easy is the task facing director Sedef Uncu? What are the barriers to and enablers for 'circular' fashion?
The case explores the direct investment strategy of CPP Investments, one of the largest and most influential pension funds and private equity investors globally. Through an analysis of its acquisition and later sale of a controlling stake in GlobalLogic, students follow the Canadian Pension Fund's private equity and venture capital investing strategy.
In 2016, just four years after launching their business, the four founders of Campus Sutra (a youth-oriented online fashion brand) had to decide whether to join an online marketplace's brand accelerator program. Joining the program promised rapid growth, but the exclusivity clause was risky. How should the founders evaluate the lucrative proposal? Nurturing high-quality private labels through support programs that accelerated the growth of exclusive brands seemed to help the platforms enhance customer engagement, but was the promise of support from the online marketplace worth the restrictions of platform exclusivity?
Founded in 1984, United Safety & Survivability Corporation (USSC) was an American company headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, that began in a garage with just a few products and a dream to develop better and safer transportation solutions. Like most firms, as COVID-19 started to spread in the United States and around the globe, USSC found itself in uncharted waters. The transportation sector, in which USSC operated, was among the most affected by the pandemic as people stopped using public transportation or were confined to their homes. The uncertainty regarding the transportation industry's future was as substantial as the drop in demand caused by the pandemic. USSC's chief executive officer found himself in a difficult situation, as the company would soon run out of money. At the same time, there were no clear answers yet to fundamental questions about the industry's future. USSC's leadership team had to quickly decide on both short-term (tactical) responses to COVID-19 and long-term (strategic) decisions, including decisions about its product portfolio and research and development strategy.
This field-based case follows the fictionalized Elisa Stallings, the manager of CandyCo's Aviation Dispatch group (Dispatch) which manages the aviation assets for the international company. Students learn about the positive leadership style of Stallings, who believed in empowering employees and having frank, respectful conversations with her staff. Stallings's leadership approach and focus on improving efficiency seem to initially work well as she encounters challenges related to Dispatch's culture and processes. Her successful track record leads to greater opportunities and challenges, however, when Stallings's boss asks her to take control of two other functions in CandyCo: Meeting Planning and Travel Services. Stallings could see the synergies among the three groups she was now managing and believed she could make great changes if she got the teams to work together, but personnel issues kept popping up. One of her employees had a temper problem, another was insubordinate, and a third was a talented worker who seemed unhappy in his role. Stallings had to decide how best to handle these three employees, but she also needed to balance three full groups of people if she wanted to create a cohesive team with a healthy workplace culture. Every puzzle piece had to fit together correctly, and the whole puzzle had to fit the CandyCo organization. This case offers the chance for rich discussions around leadership, managing change, and cross-team collaboration in the context of corporate aviation. It offers role-playing opportunities for students.
There is a pressing need for global reform of inheritance taxation systems. On average, only 0.5% of total tax revenues are sourced from inheritance taxes across the 24 OECD countries that levy them. If designed properly, inheritance taxes could play a greater role in raising revenues for cash-strapped authorities seeking to overcome mounting public deficits. A new equity-based approach to inheritance taxes could also prevent wealth inequality from becoming even more concentrated as the baby-boomers transfer intergenerational wealth. The case explores the challenges facing public policy makers as they seek to balance variables like tax exemption thresholds designed to ensure heirs receive a fair share of wealth tax-free, the operative word being fair. The case also explains the tools used to avoid paying a fair share of inhertance tax, such as trusts and tax havens. Extra teaching materials are available at https://publishing.insead.edu/case/inheritance-tax
London, UK, July 2020. G. Garvin Brown IV, the chairman of Brown-Forman Corporation and 5th generation family shareholder, was preparing to celebrate the firm's 150th anniversary. Despite its current global footprint, a turnover in excess of $3.3 billion and over 4,800 employees worldwide, Brown-Forman had remained in Louisville, Kentucky, close to the Old Forester Distillery, the founding brands' Pre-Prohibition headquarters (1882-1919), on Louisville's historic Main Street, also known as "Whiskey Row". COVID-19, however, had ruined the party, forcing the family to cancel the celebrations. Every family member had received their 150th Anniversary bottles of the limited-edition bourbon, taken from 6 barrels aged for 150 months, as well as a recently published book documenting the amazing history of Brown-Forman through photos, illustrations and artifacts. The pandemic would have a dramatic impact on economies around the world, affecting not only employees' lives but also the livelihoods of partners in the broader hospitality industry. The publicly listed, family-controlled company had weathered worse storms in the past, including Prohibition, which had tested the firm's resilience. Having a long-term-focused, engaged stockholder base and a strong governance system were tremendous advantages in such situations, especially when selling aged products with time-tested brands. Together with the two former CEOs and the board, Brown had painstakingly put together solid company and family governance structures and processes and carefully rebalanced the portfolio in a bid to mitigate the impact of downturns. Still, Garvin could not help wondering how well the delicately crafted system would hold under this real-world "stress test."
John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing factors that disproportionally affected people of color, such as credit score, income, and education. The company used sophisticated AI algorithms to analyze which roads were more prone to accidents and employed proprietary technology to track driving behavior. Moreover, the founders believed in providing a sense of community and in building a mission-driven brand that people loved, thereby altering the antagonist and distant relationship that existed between an insurance company and its customers. By the September 2021 Texas launch, the company had developed a waitlist of over 30,000 people. In March 2022, as the first policy term expired, the co-founders had to figure out which policyholders to renew and at what price to renew them. They also wondered if they could motivate drivers to become safer on the roads by investing in rewards and gamification. Going forward, by the end of 2022 Loop had plans to enter nine additional states with its revolutionary car insurance model, and contemplated removing several other pricing criteria that could be discriminatory, while incorporating metrics that might provide discounts to customers. Longer-term, the company needed to decide which strategic direction to pursue-whether to expand their fledgling company vertically by adding complementary insurance lines, like homeowners insurance, or expand horizontally to other financial services, like auto lending, that were plagued by structural biases against minorities. Given the recent lackluster performance of several high-profile insurtechs, Henry and Nadeau knew that, to achieve their goal of unseating the entrenched incumbents, they had to get these decisions right.
External auditors regularly interact with various parties at work, such as their accounting firms, engagement team members, and clients. These interactions can help shape the nature of auditors' social exchange relationships with these entities, which in turn may influence their behavior toward these targets. This installment of Accounting Matters draws from recently published research by Herda and colleagues to (1) explain how constructive auditor-target connections can develop and lead to beneficial outcomes like reduced auditor burnout and turnover intentions, as well as more citizenship behavior, and (2) discuss how these upshots might ultimately affect audit quality. This topic is important because audit quality translates into improved financial reporting, which helps stakeholders who rely on audited financial statements to make informed business decisions. Specifically, we underscore the key role auditors' perceptions of fair treatment from a relationship partner play in fostering a strong psychological bond with the target via perceived support. We further consider how auditors' consequent commitment to the target can result in favorable organizational outcomes, including enhanced audit and financial reporting quality. We also discuss practical implications for accounting firms.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) was introduced in the 1990s and has become an indicator of good management. Despite this success, many organizations still seek practical advice on ERM implementation. This article provides questions asked of an experienced chief risk officer and his staff by risk practitioners at many organizations over 11 years. Detailed answers based on best practices are provided. This article is important as it shows what areas were of concern related to ERM implementation, and many of these concerns may still apply today. The questions presented in this article fall in the following 10 areas of ERM implementation: background and context, organizational, getting started, risk identification, culture and engagement, risk criteria (which includes risk appetite and risk tolerances), tools and techniques, reporting, the benefits, and the future of ERM. This article should be of interest to practitioners involved with ERM, consultants in the area of ERM, and academics teaching courses on ERM, risk management, and related topics. This article will also provide a base against which further future research can be done to see how ERM evolves.
The COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 forced businesses across the world to adopt virtual meetings. With many people working from home, software platforms like Zoom and Teams became ubiquitous, but their widespread use also revealed many weaknesses and limitations. While technologies for virtual meetings have existed for decades, these technologies have advanced significantly in recent years, and today range from audioconference facilities to telepresence rooms with high-resolution video and sophisticated virtual presence features. The available alternatives differ significantly in costs, complexity and capabilities, and choosing the most effective technology for each meeting setting is not always easy. This is important, since after the pandemic, virtual meetings will move from being a necessity brought on by the pandemic to being a widely accepted alternative to traditional face-to-face meetings. Consequently, the questions of when and how to meet virtually will become even more significant. In this article, we describe a decision-making framework for choosing when and how to meet virtually, based on matching the appropriate communication capabilities with various meeting objectives and taking into account meeting size and duration. The framework is based on extensive empirical research conducted in partnership with several major U.S. and European companies.